New hard drive not appearing in disk utility

[dtravis7]

He said on the Windows machine it looked for a driver then nothing else happened. When you plug in a new interface in to Windows it always searches for a driver. It probably installed the driver for the interface but if the drive is shot, it will not mount of course.

 

[countfufu]

Normally no. The SATA drives I own have jumpers but for compatibility with older SATA 1.5 interfaces and other things but not like IDE drive like jumpers. SATA does not use those. Do other drives work on that interface plugged into your Mac?

i don't think so, i think we're in the same boat, the old toshiba drive had 4 jumper pins but the macbook only has a sata cable

 

[countfufu]

SATA drives do not have jumpers like what we were used to seeing on older PATA IDE drives. That drive should have immediately been recognized regardless of whether or not it was formatted. And since you bypassed anything that could be defective in your MacBook Pro preventing the drive from being seen by using the adapter, the only conclusion I come to is the drive is DOA. Why don't you contact OWC support since they have a toll free tech support line? Their techs are top notch and may be able to provide some better advice than what we can give you here.

I emailed them [calling is a bit difficult at the moment] and they sent partition instructions. The good news is I tried the drive again on a windows laptop since it had briefly worked on that platform the first time, and it was recognized. after that the macbook recognized it. i was able to format and replace the drive. I'll moniter the drive to see if it is truely defective. everything is backed up so it should be okay.

Is it normal for the performance of the mac to be slow if it has two admin user accounts?

 

[countfufu]

How did you boot the computer after installing a brand new unformatted internal hard drive?

- Nick

I used a bootable usb. when the new drive didn't work i put the old drive back

 

[dtravis7]

Is it normal for the performance of the mac to be slow if it has two admin user accounts?

What macbook model do you have? Can you post the specs?

Sorry it's in your first post. I just got a 2011 13" MBP and it was far from slow. Even with Mavericks it was blazing fast in fact.

 

[countfufu]

sorry for the late reply, the drive is working now, it was either the drive itself or the adapter. I'll do some tests with the old drive and the and the adapter to determine if it is the problem.
as for the new drive and booting, i installed the new drive and used a bootable usb to access disk utility. the new drive didn't appear [only the usb was visible] on DU so i removed it and re-placed the old drive. after that i tried the sata adapter.

Thank you for all the comments and advice

 

[countfufu]

sorry for the late reply, the drive is working now, it was either the drive itself or the adapter. I'll do some tests with the old drive and the and the adapter to determine if it is the problem.
as for the new drive and booting, i installed the new drive and used a bootable usb to access disk utility. the new drive didn't appear [only the usb was visible] on DU so i removed it and re-placed the old drive. after that i tried the sata adapter.

Thank you for all the comments and advice

 

[pm-r]

sorry for the late reply, the drive is working now, it was either the drive itself or the adapter. I'll do some tests with the old drive and the and the adapter to determine if it is the problem.
as for the new drive and booting, i installed the new drive and used a bootable usb to access disk utility. the new drive didn't appear [only the usb was visible] on DU so i removed it and re-placed the old drive. after that i tried the sata adapter.

Thank you for all the comments and advice

Are you sure that the new HDD is not showing in DU when its connected and turned On?

You may not see its name you formatted it with your Windows machine, but it should show as something like 1 TB WD10S12X or 1 TB OEM.

... ...
Is it normal for the performance of the mac to be slow if it has two admin user accounts?

Only possible if you enable Fast User Switching, and switch from on user to another with the other user still using some apps or stuff that may be running in the background.

If you logout from one and login to another user, that cannot happen.

PS: Are you sure you have connected that new drive to your Mac properly, and it doesn't sound like anything is wrong with that drive from what you have described lately.

 

[countfufu]

Are you sure that the new HDD is not showing in DU when its connected and turned On?

You may not see its name you formatted it with your Windows machine, but it should show as something like 1 TB WD10S12X or 1 TB OEM.




Only possible if you enable Fast User Switching, and switch from on user to another with the other user still using some apps or stuff that may be running in the background.

If you logout from one and login to another user, that cannot happen.

PS: Are you sure you have connected that new drive to your Mac properly, and it doesn't sound like anything is wrong with that drive from what you have described lately.

After the drive had worked on the windows laptop [the 2nd trial] I connected it to the mac and formatted it. I installed the new drive and OS X [I'm posting from the new drive]
The worst is over, now I just have to deal with multiple beachballs and the unnecessary fan noise. reseting the smc and pram don't work, and a smart utility test and apple hardware test say the HD is fine.

On the connection of the HD, I think it was okay since I used the same steps to place my old HD back in the mac when the new one wasn't working

 

[pm-r]

Well it sounds like things are actually working now but that HDD should not be causing multiple beach balls and that's often due to a lack or memory. Use Activity Monitor to have a look and keep track and see what's happening. Excessive Page Outs Page Ins is an good indication that you don't have enough.

As for the fan noise I don't know what if any temperature sensors those macbook pro 13'' early 2011 use and I didn't see any mention of any at the ifixit site or elsewhere. So maybe try one of the compatible Mac Fan Controls and hopefully they may be able to control them better.

 

[dtravis7]

How much RAM is in your MBP? Click on the Apple and on About this Mac. Post what you see there.

Also when you are getting the Beachballs, how many things do you have running and what?

Mavericks correct?

 

[countfufu]

How much RAM is in your MBP? Click on the Apple and on About this Mac. Post what you see there.

Also when you are getting the Beachballs, how many things do you have running and what?

Mavericks correct?

yes mavericks. the macbook has 4GB RAM. i have around one to two things running when the beachballs come, usually when i try to open a file or folder, close an application or try to type.

on the activity moniter the 'not responding' error appears next to the name of the program that caused the beachball.

i'll try another clean install. the beachballs appeared after i restored my backup through migration assistant. i suspect it might be the computer and network settings that were restored that are causing this

 

[dtravis7]

4GB is a bit low for Mavericks. It works as long as not much is done at the same time. The early 2011 I recently got had 4GB and with Mavericks was smooth as long as I did not go too far. I checked OWC and other sites and it will take 16GB. I would suggest upgrading ram to 8GB at least for smooth multitasking in Mavericks.

 

[countfufu]

Well it sounds like things are actually working now but that HDD should not be causing multiple beach balls and that's often due to a lack or memory. Use Activity Monitor to have a look and keep track and see what's happening. Excessive Page Outs Page Ins is an good indication that you don't have enough.

As for the fan noise I don't know what if any temperature sensors those macbook pro 13'' early 2011 use and I didn't see any mention of any at the ifixit site or elsewhere. So maybe try one of the compatible Mac Fan Controls and hopefully they may be able to control them better.

i can't find the page in & out numbers on the mavericks activity moniter, but a terminal command 'vm_stat' produced these values

Pageins: 2750027.
Pageouts: 252893.

i tried smc fan control on high but it didn't do much, i'll try some other ones

 

[countfufu]

4GB is a bit low for Mavericks. It works as long as not much is done at the same time. The early 2011 I recently got had 4GB and with Mavericks was smooth as long as I did not go too far. I checked OWC and other sites and it will take 16GB. I would suggest upgrading ram to 8GB at least for smooth multitasking in Mavericks.

that makes sense, even after the clean install the beacballs and fan problem still appears. alternatively i could install lion or mountain lion but i'm not sure about how many clean installs a drive can take

 

[countfufu]

4GB is a bit low for Mavericks. It works as long as not much is done at the same time. The early 2011 I recently got had 4GB and with Mavericks was smooth as long as I did not go too far. I checked OWC and other sites and it will take 16GB. I would suggest upgrading ram to 8GB at least for smooth multitasking in Mavericks.

what kind of RAM would you recommend? any certain brands or specifications? if it's cheaper than lion or mountain lion i'll have to get it

 

[countfufu]

4GB is a bit low for Mavericks. It works as long as not much is done at the same time. The early 2011 I recently got had 4GB and with Mavericks was smooth as long as I did not go too far. I checked OWC and other sites and it will take 16GB. I would suggest upgrading ram to 8GB at least for smooth multitasking in Mavericks.

one question though, if mavericks was running well with 4GB and a small HDD, how come it's misbehaving when a HDD with more space is introduced?

 

[pigoo3]

one question though, if mavericks was running well with 4GB and a small HDD, how come it's misbehaving when a HDD with more space is introduced?

Amount of ram and size of the hard drive are not related with the issue experienced.

- Nick

 

[pigoo3]

what kind of RAM would you recommend? any certain brands or specifications? if it's cheaper than lion or mountain lion i'll have to get it

We usually recommend getting ram from:

- www.macsales.com
- www.Crucial.com

Not only because of decent prices…but because of lifetime warranty, and good customer service.

Not exactly sure what you mean by…"if it's cheaper than lion or mountain lion i'll have to get it". But the price of ram and the OS version that the computer is running are not related.

Where a relationship does exist is…many times newer OS versions run better with more ram. But even this rule is not 100%.

- Nick

 

[countfufu]

We usually recommend getting ram from:

- Other World Computing (OWC) - Performance Upgrades For Your Mac
- Crucial.com - DRAM, solid state drive (SSD) memory upgrades for Dell, Mac, Apple, HP, Compaq, Lenovo, Acer, ASUS

Not only because of decent prices…but because of lifetime warranty, and good customer service.

Not exactly sure what you mean by…"if it's cheaper than lion or mountain lion i'll have to get it". But the price of ram and the OS version that the computer is running are not related.

Where a relationship does exist is…many times newer OS versions run better with more ram. But even this rule is not 100%.

- Nick

that makes it even stranger since i was running mavericks for a while, it was a little slow but not that many beachballs.
I was hoping the price of RAM was cheaper than the OS, but 8GB is about $90 compared to the $20 for lion or mountain lion